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VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY 



LECTURE BY 

V 

SWAMI ABHEDANANDA 

ON 



The Word and me Cross in Ancient India 

DELIVERED UNDER THE AUSPTCES OF THE VEDANTA SOCIETY, « 

AT TUXEDO HALL, NEW YORK, SUNDAY, 'W 

MARCH 4th, I9OO. 



Published by the Vedanta Society 

NEW YORK 



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Copyright, 1900, by Swami Abhedananda, new york 



Price 10 Cents. 






32683 



Library of Congress 

Two Copies Received 
AUG 9 1900 

Copyright entry 

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SECOND COFT. 

Delivered to 

ORDER DIVISION, 



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VI 4? 



" The Word was Brahman " (or The Absolute.)— Bri. Upaniskad. 

14 He who exists by Himself let first stream forth the Word, the Eternal, 
without beginning or end, the Divine Word which we read in the Veda, whence 
proceeded the evolution of the world."— Mah&bh&rata. 



THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT 

INDIA. 

Since the beginning of the Christian era the fol- 
lowers of Christ have popularised the two great sacred 
symbols of the ancient Aryans — the Word or the 
Son of God, and the Cross. Although these two 
symbols were unknown amongst the Semitic races, 
especially the ancient Hebrews, yet they were known 
to the pre-Christian Greek philosophers as well as to 
the Aryan philosophers and thinkers who lived in an- 
cient India. 

The conception that the Word was the only be- 
gotten Son of the Father, the first-born, or the Son of 
God, was rooted deep in the abstruse philosophical 
speculations of the Aryan minds who tried to bridge 
over the gulf that exists between the visible and the 
invisible, between the phenomenal and the noumenal, 
between the individual soul of man and God the Crea- 
tor of all. The Aryan seekers after the ultimate cause 
of the universe and the true relation of soul to God 
advanced many theories to explain the apparent sepa- 
ration between the Creator and the created, between 
God and the soul of man; and made various attempts 



VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY, 



to discover the means by vtfiich the two can be 
brought together in closer union and by which the 
soul of man will return to its Creator. 

In ancient Judaism, however, the conception of 
Jehovah was so objective, so far from the universe, so 
majestic and so high that the idea of union between 
the individual soul and Jehovah or even its approach 
to His throne was considered to be blasphemous, and 
insulting to Jehovah the Supreme Deity. The result 
of this conception was that the idea of the sonship of 
man, or of the Word, never took any hold upon the 
ancient Semitic minds. The superficial readers of the 
Old Testament may find some vague expressions of 
the idea of sonship of man in such passages as : " Ye 
are the children of the Lord your God " — Deut 
xiv. i ; or in the passage where Moses says : " Of the 
Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful and hast 
forgotten God that formed thee" — Deut. xxxii. 18; 
or when he asks : " Is not he thy father that hath 
bought thee? Hath he not made thee and established 
thee?" — Deut. xxxii. 6. In whatever manner the 
Christian theologians might interpret such passages 
they never meant the same idea of the fatherhood of 
God, or the sonship of man, or of the Word or of the 
Christ which pervades the Fourth Gospel. Moses 
meant nothing more than the fatherly goodness of the 
Creator. Through the paternal goodness of Elohim 
Yahveh, Abraham became the friend of God. A simi- 
lar meaning lies behind the passage where Adam is 
described, once only in the New Testament, as the 
Son of God. 



THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. 3 

The deep philosophical meaning which is con- 
nected with the first verse of the Fourth Gospel : " In 
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
God and the Word was God," was never expressed 
before by any of the writers either of the New or of 
the Old Testaments. Some of the Christian theolo- 
gians have tried to trace the origin of the meaning of 
the Divine Word as given in the Fourth Gospel to 
certain expressions of some Hebrew prophets of the 
Old Testament. For instance, they refer to the pas- 
sage, " By the Word of the Lord were the heavens 
made and all the host of them by the breath of his 
mouth " — Psalm xxxiii. 6. Some again refer to 
another passage : " He sent his word and healed 
them " — Psalm cvii. 20. In these and similar other 
passages " word " does not stand for any other mean- 
ing than simple commandment, as we find in the 
verse : " He sendeth forth his commandment upon 
earth; his word runneth very swiftly" — Psalm cxlvii. 
15. Thus we can understand that in the Jewish Scrip- 
tures there is no historical antecedent of the idea of 
the Divine Word as the Son of God which is described 
by the writer of the Fourth Gospel in the first verse 
of the first chapter. 

The Oriental scholars are unanimous in their opin- 
ion that the writer of the Fourth Gospel was a fol- 
lower of Philo, the reformed Jewish philosopher, who 
was a contemporary of Jesus and who lived in Alex- 
andria from 20 B.C. to 60 A.D., but never heard of 
Jesus. The writings of Philo Judeas abound in pas- 
sages which show that he was a student of Greek 



VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY, 



philosophy and that he adopted the Greek conception 
of the Word, or the only begotten Son of God, as ex- 
l 'ained by the Stoic philosophers of the pre-Christian 
era. It was through Philo that the Greek conception 
of the Divine Word was introduced amongst the 
thoughtful class of the Jews then living in Alexandria, 
and was afterwards identified with Jesus the Christ by 
the writer of the Fourth Gospel, and was later ac- 
cepted by Christians generally. Alexandria was in 
those days the principal centre of education and cul- 
ture, where Jewish, Greek, Hindu, and Buddhist phil- 
osophers met and interchanged thoughts and religious 
ideas. The Greek philosophers called the Divine 
Word Logos. Logos is a Greek word which meant at 
first simply word, not as a mere sound, but as thought 
embodied in sound. The theory of the Logos first 
originated with Heraclitus, one of the earliest Greek 
philosophers who lived about 460 B.C. Although he 
believed that fire was the primitive element of the 
phenomenal universe, still he postulated some power, 
force, or law which controlled the material element 
fire. He called that power Logos, that is, reason or 
order. Though the theory of the Logos, — that reason, 
or order, was the primal cause of the Cosmos, origi- 
nated in Greece with Heraclitus, yet it did not 
develop in meaning until the time of the Stoics. The 
Stoic philosophers believed that Logos, or Supreme 
Reason, or God, pervaded all matter. It was not only 
the Creator of all things but controller and ruler also. 
The Stoic philosophers held that the Logos was uni- 
versal and eternal and that the human soul possessed 



THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. 5 

a portion of the universal Logos and therefore man 
had a share of intelligence and reason. They believed 
that word, or speech, was the manifestation of Reason, 
or thought, which would remain as non-existent for 
us, without the power of speech. This Logos became 
the medium through which the transcendent Cause 
of the universe was related to the phenomenal world. 
It was like the bridge between God and the world. 
Philo's mind, which was seeking some explanation 
for the relation between Jehovah and the world, 
adopted the Stoic explanation and the theory of the 
Logos. 

In Philo's hands the theory of the Logos gradually 
developed in its meaning. By Logos he wished to 
express not merely word, but the thought, or idea of 
which word or speech is but the manifestation. As 
the audible or perceptible sound of a word is the ex- 
pression of an imperceptible thought or idea, so the 
visible universe is the expression of the ideal universe, 
or the universe in a thought form existing in the 
Divine mind. This ideal creation, or concept of the 
universe, or type of the universe in the Divine mind 
was the Logos, and it was called by Philo the only 
begotten Son, or unique Son. Philo always used the 
only begotten Son in its philosophical sense, that is, 
as the Thought of God, made visible in the world 
either by creation or projection, but there is nothing 
in his writings to show that he ever personified the 
Logos. These terms, more or less poetical with Philo, 
became afterwards most technical when the Logos 
was identified with Christ by the writer of the Fourth 



6 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

Gospel. The author of this gospel did not identify 
the Logos with Jesus of Nazareth, who was son of 
Mary, but with Christ the incarnation of the ideal 
man, the perfect type of man which existed in the 
Divine mind from the beginning. As the Logos was 
the only begotten son of God according to Philo, who 
never heard of Jesus the Christ, so it was with his dis- 
ciples. The author of the Fourth Gospel, believing 
in Jesus as the perfect type of man, gave him all the 
predicates of the Logos and described him as the Son 
of God. 

Some scholars are of opinion that this meaning 
which was given to the Logos or word by Philo and 
the Neo Platonists of later date was the result of the 
influence of the Hindu philosophers who lived in Al- 
exandria and Greece about the time of Alexander 
the Great, 333 B.C. This has been supported by the 
writings of Eusebius, who quotes a work on Platonic 
philosophy by Aristocles, who states therein on the 
authority of Aristoxenes, a pupil of Aristotle, that an 
Indian philosopher came to Athens and had a discus- 
sion with Socrates. When Socrates told him that his 
philosophy consisted in inquiries about the life of 
man, the Indian philosopher is said to have smiled, 
and to have replied that no one could understand 
things human who did not understand things divine.* 

In the most ancient writings of the Hindus, the 
Vedas, we find the idea of Logos most clearly ex- 
pressed. There are many Sanskrit words used in the 
Vedas which signify that Divinity is the Lord of 

* See Max Muller's " Theosophy or Psychological Religion," pp. 83-84. 



THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. 7 

Speech, or word, the Lord of thought and reason, or 
Logos. For instance, Brihaspati is a Sanskrit com- 
pound word which we read often in the Vedas. Brihas 
comes from the Sanskrit root verb Brih or Barh, 
meaning to break forth or drive forth; from the same 
root Latin Verbum and English Word can be derived; 
and Pati means lord or father. Therefore Brihaspati 
means the Lord or Father of word. A synonym of 
Brihaspati is the Sanskrit Vachaspati — Vdchas or Vak 
(the same as Vox) means word. So Vachaspati also 
means the Lord or Father of word, or speech. In 
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad we read Vak vai Brahma, 
" The word was Brahman," or the Absolute." Again, 
it is stated that " That, of which these things are 
born, by which when born they live, and into which 
they return and enter after death, or dissolution, is 
Brahman." " He with his mind united himself with 
his word." * " In the beginning, Divine Vak, or Word 
eternal, without beginning or end, consisting of wis- 
dom, was uttered by the Self-existent One from 
which all activities proceeded." " In the beginning 
the Lord of the universe shaped from the words the 
names and forms of all beings, and the procedure of 
all activities." f In one of the ancient writings of the 
Hindus we read : " I know that great Self-effulgent 
Being who thought all forms and made their 
names." J "He desired let a second body be born 
of me and embraced word with his mind." § " All 

* Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. 

+ Smriti. 

X Taittiriya Aranyaka III., 12, 17. 

§ Brihadaranyaka Upanishad I., i, 24. 



8 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

things that can be thought of had beginning in word, 
or the eternal concept in the Divine mind." Again, 
in the Mahabharata we read: " He who exists by 
himself let first stream forth the Word, the eternal 
without beginning or end, the Divine Word which 
we read in the Veda, whence proceeded the evolution 
of the world." The Hindus believe that the phe- 
nomena of the world exist because they are in the 
Veda. The word Veda does not stand for any book or 
writing but for Logos, or Sophia, or Wisdom, and 
comprehends all named concepts necessary for the 
creation of all created things. In the Veda it is said: 
" When the Lord projected the concept of the earth 
from His Divine mind, the earth was formed," etc. 
By Word the Vedic sages did not mean mere sound, 
but thought or concept in the Divine mind; there- 
fore, the Divine mind was the Father, and Word or 
concept or ideal type was the Son, like the Greek 
Logos, as explained by Philo. 

The later Hindu philosophers took up this idea, dis- 
cussed it, and wrote volumes after volumes on the 
Logos theory. Whenever any man or woman reached 
perfection and manifested divinity, he or she was wor- 
shipped as the incarnation of the Word, the first-born, 
or the manifestation of the ideal man or woman as 
existing in the Divine mind. Krisna, Siva, Rama, 
Buddha, and others are worshipped in India as the 
ideal types of men, or incarnations of the Word. 

As the doctrine of the Logos, the very life-blood 
of Christianity was purely of Aryan origin, most 
probably of Hindu origin, so the symbol of the Cross, 



THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. 9 

which is the corner-stone of the structure of Chris- 
tianity, originated not amongst the Hebrews but 
amongst the Aryans. 

Well has it been said by St. Augustine : " What is 
now called the Christian religion has existed among 
the ancients and was not absent from the beginning of 
the human race until Christ came in the flesh, from 
which time the true religion, which existed already, 
began to be called ' Christian.' " Whatever import- 
ance the followers of Christ may attach to the worship 
of the Cross by connecting it with the crucifixion of 
Jesus of Nazareth, it existed as a religious symbol for 
centuries before the birth of Christ, and was largely 
used as a sacred symbol by the Egyptians, Persians, 
Hindus, Buddhists, Tibetans, Chinese, and other an- 
cient nations of almost all parts of the world. The 
Cross is the oldest religious symbol that has ever been 
invented by human mind. Traces of the worship of 
the Cross as a religious symbol can be found amongst 
the most ancient pre-historic aboriginal tribes of the 
old and new worlds. 

The ancient Egyptians used the Tau Cross, which 
is like the English letter T. In the Egyptian hier- 
oglyphics, the Cross has been interpreted variously; 
for instance, a Cross with four equal arms has been 
assumed to have meant four elements. When the 
form of the Cross was composed of two or four scep- 
tres with a circle at the point of interception it is said 
to indicate " divine potentiality." It stood sometimes 
for " protective power," sometimes " for life to come," 
etc. Some of the Egyptian deities, as Ra 9 Ammon-Ra, 



IO VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

and Ammon had the sacred " Tau Cross " in their 
hands. The Cross was used by the Egyptians in tat- 
tooing the body, in the paintings on the walls and 
tombs at Thebes. A long Cross surmounting a heart, 
meaning good or goodness, was fixed upon the fronts 
of houses in Thebes and Memphis, intimating " This 
is the abode of the good." The Egyptian symbols of 
five planets had a Cross connected with each. The 
natives of Abyssinia used to observe certain religious 
rites by plunging a Cross in the river Gitche. In an- 
cient India the Cross was used as a sign of prosperity, 
good luck, longevity and happiness, a protector from 
evil, and was used largely in connection with religious 
rites and ceremonies. The most ancient form of Cross 
which has been used in India from prehistoric times 
is called Swastika. It is like a Greek Cross, but its 
arms are bent at right angles. It literally means in 
Sanskrit Su, well, and Asti, being, that is, well being, 
welfare. Originally the form of Swastika was two 
lines crossing each other, but afterwards it was shaped 
like ffi . The word Swastika had been in existence in 
the Sanskrit language long before Buddha was born. 
In the Rig Veda we read, " Swasti me Indra," " Do 
thou, O Indra, grant me welfare." Swastika Cross 
appears in the hands of Visnu, the Preserver of the 
world, and represents the world-sustaining power 
which Visnu possesses. It was found in the foot- 
prints of Buddha in Buddhistic temples. In the 
Buddhistic inscriptions and coins, the Swastika or 
Cross very often occurs. In the Ramayana we read, 
" Bharata selects a ship marked with the sign of the 



THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. II 

Cross or Swastika." The Buddhistic Stupas (tombs) 
were built in the form of a Swastika or Cross. When 
a woman covers her breast with crossed arms it is 
called Swastika posture, that is, the sign of good luck, 
prosperity and protection. It is supposed that a 
woman with Swastika posture is free from all dangers. 
When a person sits cross-legged, it is called Swastika 
posture, which is the best of all the sitting postures. 
In ancient times houses were built in the form of a 
Swastika Cross. 

When the Cross became the religious symbol of 
the Buddhists, wherever Buddhism went the symbol 
of the Cross travelled with it. In Tibet, China, 
Korea, Japan, Burma, Ceylon, Java, and in other 
places the Cross as a religious symbol was introduced 
from India. In China, Japan, and in other countries 
the statues of Buddha were usually marked with a 
Swastika or Cross. In Tibet the Cross is to be found 
as the royal emblem of the Bonpa deities. The 
Lamas, or Buddhist priests, carry a Cross and use 
it at the time of benediction. 

Sir Stamford Raffles, after living in Java for twenty 
years, writes: "Java received her civilization and art 
directly from India. Out of the six steps of the most 
ancient prehistoric temples in Java, three are in the 
form of a Cross." 

In the most ancient paintings of the Hindus, 
Krisna has a Cross in his hand. Yama, the ruler of 
the departed ones, is painted as holding a Cross in 
one hand. Some of the Christian missionaries say 
that the Cross was introduced into India by the early 

LofC. 



12 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

Christians who visited the country. Such statements 
are not correct. Among the most interesting ancient 
relics that have been recently excavated in the forests 
of Central India which were never visited by any 
Christian missionary, two rude stone Crosses have 
been discovered. The archeologists think that those 
Crosses must have existed in good shape at least three 
thousand years before the advent of Jesus the Christ. 
Moreover, the ancient rock-cut cave of Elepanta is 
nearly in the form of a Greek Cross; its dimensions 
being longitudinally 130 feet and transversely 123 
feet, and height is about 17 feet. In this cave, which 
was cut before the Buddhistic period, there is a figure 
of Hindu Trinity -holding a huge Cross in one hand. 
Tavernier, who visited Benares in the end of the 
seventeenth century, seeing the temple of Visnu, said 
that the body of this edifice was built in the form of 
an immense Cross. This temple was destroyed by 
Aurungzebe, the Mogul emperor, who built a huge 
mosque in its place. 

The Cross is to be found in almost all the ancient 
temples of India. Amongst the Jains, the Swastika 
or Cross is the oldest religious symbol. In the San- 
skrit grammar of Panini, written at least 400 B.C., 
Swastika or Cross is described as one of the ancient 
signs for marking cattle, and even to-day cattle and 
sheep are marked with a Cross by the illiterate classes 
of India. Swastika is mentioned in the Atharva Veda. 
Even to-day the Hindus paint a Swastika or Cross on 
the walls of the room which the newly married couple 
enter immediately after the wedding. 



THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. 13 

The " Y "-shaped Cross is drawn on the foreheads 
of the Vaisnavas, the dualistic worshippers of Vis nu. 
The Cross was used in the Hindu coins of prehistoric 
period. It was also used as decoration on walls, 
furniture, earthenware, rugs, and on garments worn 
by the priests and priestesses. 

This Swastika or peculiar form of the Cross is the 
oldest of all forms of this symbol that are found in 
the West. It originated in prehistoric times amongst 
the Aryans who inhabited India, and from there it 
travelled all over the world. The same sign was found 
in hundreds of places on the Christians' tombs in the 
Catacombs at Rome. 

There was a time when a great discussion arose 
amongst the early Christians as to the selection of the 
Cross which should be representative, and history tells 
us that the Swastika was one of those which were sug- 
gested. It is for this reason we find it on the tombs 
in the Catacombs at Rome. The latest use of Swas- 
tika mentioned in the literature on this subject is in 
the Archiepiscopal chair in the cathedral at Milan. 

Prehistoric archeologists maintain that the Swas- 
tika or Cross travelled into Western countries from 
the East during the Bronze age. They claim that 
long before the tin mines of Spain, Britain or Ger- 
many were discovered, bronze came to Europe from 
the East — Burma, Siam, and other places where cop- 
per and tin were first made into bronze. When 
bronze was introduced into Western Asia, Egypt, and 
Europe, the sign of the Cross was also introduced in 
those countries, as the most ancient relic is found on 



14 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

bronze. Professor Wilson, in his celebrated essay on 
Swastika, which was read before the Smithsonian In- 
stitute, not only supports this theory of migration of 
the symbol of Cross from the East to the West, but 
believes that it migrated from Asia to America. Re- 
garding the same symbol which has been discovered 
in North and South America, Professor Wilson says: 
" Adopting the theory of migration of the Swastika, 
we may therefore conclude that if the Swastika came 
from India or Eastern Asia (to America) it came 
earlier than the sixth century B.C." 

Thus we can understand how the Word, or the Son 
of God, was known in ancient India and that the 
Cross was the most ancient religious symbol of the 
Hindus. Not only this, but the earliest record of the 
sacrifice of a divine man in space is to be found in 
the Rig Veda described in mythological language. 
John P. Lundy, in his " Monumental Christianity/' 
says : " At any rate, the religion of India had its 
mythical crucified victim long anterior to Christianity. 
... I am disposed to believe this to be the victim 
described in the Vedas themselves. We read in the 
Rig Veda: 'The first-born being, before the begin- 
ning of the material phenomena, became a victim of 
sacrifice. The Devas, gods, and angels who came 
later took the first-born being for the animal of sacri- 
fice, fastened him to a sacrificial post, sanctified him, 
and afterwards sacrificed him, stretching his limbs in 
the eternal space. From that sacrifice arose all that 
exists on earth and in the heavens/ " Here you will 
notice the metaphor that the first-born being was the 



THE WORD AND THE CROSS IN ANCIENT INDIA. 15 

only begotten son of God, the absolute Being; that 
he was fastened to a post and was sacrificed by the 
Devas for the good of the universe. The students of 
the Vedic literature are well aware of the fact that the 
most ancient sacrificial post was in the form of a 
Cross. On such a post the first-born was fastened, 
like an animal of sacrifice. 

John P. Lundy quotes from Colebrooke in his 
" Monumental Christianity " : " When that ancient 
sacrifice was completed, sages and men and our pro- 
genitors were by him formed. Viewing with an ob- 
servant mind this oblation, which primeval Devas 
offered, I venerate." Mr. Lundy says : " This looks 
like the lamb slain from the foundation of the world 
and whom all the angels of God worship." 

Thus the vital points of Christianity, in whatever 
manner they might have been explained by priests and 
theologians, were of Aryan origin. Whenever we 
worship the Cross, or the Son of God, we uncon- 
sciously worship the Aryan symbols of prehistoric 
times. Whenever we think of the sacrifice of Calvary, 
we unknowingly think of the mythological sacrifice 
of the first-born being which is described in the Vedas. 

Although these and other similar religious symbols 
have certain value in helping human minds in the path 
of spiritual progress as objects of concentration and 
meditation, still they are of slight consequence if those 
abstract truths, for which all religious symbols stand, 
are forgotten or are not properly understood. Many 
symbols are used in India, each of which represents 
an abstract truth which ordinary minds cannot easily 



1 6 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

grasp. They are used largely by the dualistic and 
qualified non-dualistic worshippers of God. Most of 
them, however, like the orthodox Christians, do not 
understand the true meanings of the mythological 
symbols of the Word, Cross, etc., and are the easy 
victims of superstition and errors. 

The object of Vedanta philosophy is to free human 
minds from ignorance, superstition, prejudice, and 
errors, as well as to lead them to the realization of 
those abstract truths which give foundation to the 
names and forms of all symbols. Therefore Vedanta 
insists that salvation cannot be obtained by the mere 
worship of the Cross, or the Son of God, or the Word 
in flesh and blood, and maintains that it can only 
be reached by going beyond all symbols, by realizing 
the sonship of the soul and its oneness with the Uni- 
versal Spirit. 

Vedanta declares that each individual soul is in 
reality the Word, the Christ or Son of God, which 
dwells eternally in the bosom of the Father, — nay, 
which is one with Him ; that there is no gulf between 
the Father and His children, and that the realization 
of this Supreme Unity depends upon the sacrifice of 
the lower self upon the Cross made by the traversing 
of the Divine will by the human will. Such a sacrifice 
obliterates the Cross and leaves only the Word, 
which is the Father, the Absolute Brahman. 



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